Rank 'Em: Greatest Sports Collapses

Boston is no stranger to teams coming back from 3-0 deficits, but this time, it's on the wrong side of that peculiar accomplishment.

The Boston Bruins have completed one of hockey's most epic collapses, losing four games in a row to the Philadelphia Flyers after being up 3-0 in the series. Boston lost overtime matches, close games and blowouts, running the gamut of terrible ways to blow a huge lead. The Bruins have now joined an ignominious club of teams and players who let a certain victory disappear into the distance.

Are the Bruins the victims of the worst sports collapse ever? Cast your vote now!

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Detroit has the distinct advantage of being the first team in major sports team history to blow a 3-0 series lead. The Red Wings fell victim to the Toronto Maple Leafs despite leading in the final period of Game 4.

The Phillies enjoyed a comfortable 6.5-game lead with 12 games to play but watched it all evaporate in a disastrous road trip to Cincinnati and St. Louis.

How does a team that starts the NFL season 6-0 wind up out of the playoffs? It ends the season with five straight losses to finish a very average 8-8.

Things were moving along quite nicely for the Red Sox in the summer of '78, as they were sitting on a nice 14-game lead. If losing the lead and coming back to force a one-game playoff wasn't stressful enough, watching Bucky Dent hit a home run to send the archrival Yankees to the playoffs would do the trick.

Eight straight wins and an 8-1 record is a good recipe for an enjoyable second half and a playoff berth. Unless you forget how to win, lose your last six games and start your offseason early.

In one of the all-time historic NFL collapses, the Oilers watched a 35-3 lead disappear in the second half of a 1992 AFC wild-card game against the Bills.

After pulling even with a 6-1 second-set victory, Novotna was one point away from a 5-1 lead in the defining set against Steffi Graf when she seemingly forgot how to play tennis. She wouldn't win another game.

An 11-game lead in August is supposed to be safe. Despite losing nine straight, the Angels salvaged a one-game playoff only to lose to Seattle and watch the season come to an abrupt end.

The Shark took a 6-stroke lead into the final round at the 1996 Masters but a bogey, bogey, bogey and double-bogey on four straight holes tends to erase such leads.

Van de Velde just needed a double-bogey on 18 at the 1999 British Open. Just a double-bogey. That's all. He served up a triple-bogey and thus became golf's ultimate collapse.

Portland built up a 15-point fourth-quarter lead over the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals only to miss 13 straight shots on the way to the loss.

The 2004 ALCS in which the Red Sox erased a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees is so historic and memorable that it almost made the Red Sox's eventual sweep in the World Series an afterthought.

Minnesota built up an impressive 38-7 lead over Texas Tech with 7:37 left in the third quarter but watched the Red Raiders post 31 unanswered points on their way to an OT victory and the largest comeback in bowl history.

The Mets enjoyed a seven-game lead in the last month but lost 12 of their last 17, committing 21 errors in the process, to get to a win-or-go-home game on the final day of the regular season. Veteran Tom Glavine took the hill and was immediately shelled, as were the team's postseason hopes.

The Bruins jumped out to a 3-0 lead over the Flyers and nearly had the Philadelphia squad beat. A 5-4 overtime loss in Game 4, however, sent the Bruins into a tailspin, and the Flyers won the next three matches.